The carpenter bee (genus Xylocopa spp.) is busy building its nest while the cuckoo wasp (family Chrysididae) is surreptitiously laying her own eggs in the same nest, taking advantage of the hard-working carpenter bee. The cuckoo wasp eggs will turn into larvae that consume the carpenter bee's pollen and brood. This was filmed on June 7, 2015 in El Paso, Texas.
Kleptoparasite: or cleptoparasite (literally, parasitism by theft) is a form of feeding in which one animal takes prey or other food from another that has caught, collected, or otherwise prepared the food, including stored food (as in the case of cuckoo bees, which lay their eggs on the pollen masses made by other bees). The term is also used to describe the stealing of nest material or other inanimate objects from one animal by another. Taken from: [ Ссылка ]
